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Bob Dylan(1991) Photo By Xavier Badosa –

Top 10 Astonishing Facts about Bob Dylan

Robert Dylan is a singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist from the United States.
For nearly 60 years, Bob Dylan has had a tremendous influence on popular culture and is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Many of his most famous songs, such as Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin’, were anthems for the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s.

His compositions were influenced by a variety of political, social, intellectual, and literary problems at the time, breaking mainstream music norms and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.

Here are the top ten astonishing facts about Bob Dylan.

1. He was not born Bob Dylan

His parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice Stone gave him the name Robert Allen Zimmerman.

When he was a student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he changed his name from Robert Zimmerman to Dylan.

He renamed himself Bob Dylan after the poet Dylan Thomas. The poet with an opaque poetic style, which he used to describe unusual and day-to-day events.

He didn’t legally change his name until August 1962, when he signed his first management contracts.

2. He’s only had one surprising No. 1 Hit

That’s what you call a late bloomer! It took nearly 60 years for Dylan to have his first number one song under his name on any Billboard chart.

Dylan released “Murder Most Foul,” a 17-minute epic track, in March 2020. The song debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Rock Digital Song Sales chart the following week.

The song discusses John F. Kennedy’s assassination in the context of American political and cultural history. However, as the song progresses, it moves away from JFK and touches on several other historical events of the time.

Dylan’s unpleasantness has been remarkably consistent.

3. Bob Dylan wasn’t a one-hit-wonder.

Bob Dylan Photo By Chris Hakkens –

Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut studio album sold only 5,000 copies when it was released in 1962, indicating that he was going to be Columbia Records’ new star.

However, thanks to producer John Hammond, who was instrumental in his discovery, Bob Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was released in 1963.

The album was an immediate success, selling 10,000 copies a month and bringing Dylan an income of about $2,500 a month.

Bob Dylan’s life progressed quickly after that, with the release of his third and fourth albums, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan, in 1964 and 1965, respectively.

He has currently sold over 125 million albums around the world.

4. He has long been an activist

Bob Dylan has always been an enigma because he has never explicitly stated his involvement in politics or social movements.

At the same time, he is regarded as one of the most influential folk protest writers of our time, particularly during the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Bob Dylan’s use of music as a tool of protest is one of his most enduring legacies. He sang about significant black figures such as Medgar Evers and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter during the March on Washington.

Furthermore, many of his songs, such as “Like a Rolling Stone” from Highway 61 Revisited and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” addressed many of the civil rights issues that Americans faced in the 1960s.

With the release of Blood on the Tracks in 1975, he continued to show evidence of his activism well into the 1970s. To this day, he has never explained why he backed out.

5. He backed out of performing at  Woodstock

Bob Dylan Photo By Alberto Cabello –

Woodstock was a music festival held on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, in August 1969.

Bob Dylan withdrew from the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival, which has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history as well as a defining event for the counterculture generation.

Bob Dylan was already well-known when he was asked to perform at Woodstock in 1969. He allegedly signed a contract promising to play but then backed out at the last minute. To this day, he has never explained why he backed out.

6. Bob Dylan was arrested for trespassing

Bob Dylan Photo By Alberto Cabello –

Dylan was arrested in the summer of 2009 by Kristie Buble, a 24-year-old Long Branch police officer, after strolling into the yard of a for-sale home.

Residents were alarmed by his appearance and called the cops to report an ‘eccentric-looking old man’ in their yard. They had no idea Dylan, 68 at the time, was in town for a national concert tour.

However, there is growing speculation that when the artist was recently detained by police, he was looking for Bruce Springsteen’s old house, where he wrote the classic Born to Run.

7. Dylan was involved in a motorcycle accident.

It’s the most studied motorcycle crash in pop culture history, but the details are as elusive as the meaning of a Bob Dylan lyric.

Dylan was riding a motorcycle when it crashed in 1966. It’s a piece of Dylan lore, as the exact circumstances of his crash are unknown. A police report was also not filed,  so there was no official record of the crash.

However he was never hospitalized as a result of the accident, but he was out of the public eye for years afterwards.

Dylan’s attitude changed as a result of his time away from the stage, and he needed that moment of calm, a break from the hamster wheel, to realize what was truly important in life. This was a pivotal period in Bob Dylan’s songwriting style.

8. He is the recipient of both a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize.

Bob Dylan Photo By Jean-Luc –

While chart-topping success has not been common, Dylan has received even more prestigious awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize.

In 2008, he became the first rock musician to receive a Pulitzer Prize. The committee cited his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power” in awarding him the special citation.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, with the committee praising him for “creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

9. He claimed he was an orphan to sign with Columbia Records

Dylan was only 20 when he signed his first recording contract with Columbia Records, and he was technically still a minor under New York law at the time.

Since dropping out of college a year before, the young singer had lost contact with his parents. Rather than having his parents co-sign the contract, he lied to the label, claiming to be an orphan.

The clause was waived by legendary producer John Hammond, who allowed Dylan to sign the contract himself.

He claimed to be an orphan from New Mexico who hopped a train to New York City in the bio he submitted to Columbia Records for his debut album.

10. Bob Dylan refused to go on The Ed Sullivan Show

In May 1963, Dylan was set to perform “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” on the world’s most popular entertainment show – Ed Sullivan Show.

Dylan refused to go on after a CBS executive told him he couldn’t play the song on the air because he was afraid of a lawsuit, despite running it by Ed Sullivan himself during rehearsals.

The song was about a satirical talking-blues piece mocking the ultra-conservative John Birch Society’s penchant to perceive covert members of an international Communist conspiracy hiding behind every tree.